


A Wonderous Terror

by icarus_chained



Category: RED (2010)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Espionage, F/M, Love, Romance, Scars, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 19:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had marked him for her own, and he had never once regretted it. Ivan & Victoria, shortly after the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Wonderous Terror

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thing to vent because I saw the movie for the first time last night and fell _madly in love_ with these two and their mad, complicated, cheerfully violent romance. Favourite. Spy. Couple. Ever.

He loved her. Madly, passionately, limitlessly. It was not a difficult thing to acknowledge, whether to himself or to the world at large. He always had, always would. From the very first moment they met, to the last breath he breathed on this earth, he would always, always love her.

And that was, he thought, one of the most exhilarating thoughts he'd ever had.

"What's that look for," she asked, slowly and dangerously as she curled against him under the sheets. Despite the tone, her body was loose and relaxed beneath the slow sweep of his hands. Lean, aged, all sharp bones and soft curves, the raised lines of old scars and the soft bandages over fresh wounds. Such a contrasting thing. Ever-changing, ever fixed. So brutal, so beautiful. 

So utterly perfect. God, was she not the most perfect creation in all the world? The most terrible, beautiful angel ever born?

"What look?" he replied, already smiling, a blind grin into the moonlit darkness around them. "There is no look. It is too dark to see."

"Who said anything about _seeing_?" she sniped back, a low purr of menace as she rose above him in the silver shadows, a pale form ranged like an apparition across his chest. "I don't need to see you to know that look, Ivan. I can feel you wearing it." 

He laughed at that, a rich bubble of amusement, of desperate adoration. She frowned. He knew she did, knew her as surely as she him. He sensed the furrowing of her brows as she leaned across him in the moonlight, one cool hand creeping up his chest, curling like a predatory spider across his heart, below his throat. His pulse, treacherously, leapt with excitement beneath it, and he could not help but grin.

"I love you," he breathed, a fervent prayer in the darkness, a laughing, heartfelt explanation. "I was thinking, you are the most wonderous terror I have ever encountered." He shook his head, chuckled as her fingers curled, biting faintly into his chest. "Is that the look you sensed, my darling?"

"... For god's sake, Ivan," she murmured, startled and exasperated, but he thought he heard the faint curl of a smile. She moved like a silken shadow, drawing herself up along him to sit at his shoulder and peer down at him in the darkness. "You've gotten dreadfully poetic in your old age. You are aware of that?"

He smirked. "I was always poetic. Russian, my bunny. We are a poetic people, are we not?" 

And yes, he said it mostly to enjoy the feel of her as she stilled, the sudden lethal focus of an annoyed Victoria Winslow curled across him. He taunted, he teased, he treaded where angels feared to tread. This lethal woman poised across him, her hand only inches from his vulnerable throat, he teased her gently only to feel the danger of her come to life. And why not? All these years, all this love, all those people dead behind them. Why, for one moment, should he restrain himself beneath her? Why should he shy away from that terrible beauty that was the heart of her?

"Poetic is not the word that comes to mind," she said at last, slow and considering, the light tap of her fingertip at the base of his throat a delicious warning. "Hmm. Perhaps 'bloody-minded'? And 'florid'. Mmm. Yes, those are closer." 

He gripped the curve of her hip, his fingers tightening on the gleeful thrum of excitement, careful to avoid the bandages. "You wound me," he murmured, baring his teeth delightedly. "After all these years, my love, you have no better words for me?" 

She stilled for a moment, coiled and thoughtful, and then ... then she leaned close, her lips poised above his hairline, her breath warm against his temple. He curved into her, pressed himself into the hollow of her throat and the lean, hard lines of her arms, and she curled herself around him in turn, protective and predatory and oh, so possessive. So wonderfully, desperately possessive.

"Maybe," she mused, light and thoughtful, only belied by the tight curl of her hand at his shoulder. "Maybe a word or two, yes." Her hand moved, curling down across his shoulder to brush the scars high on his chest, the three stars that had marked him hers for so many years now, and he felt a shudder move through him, a stuttering thump of his heart. " _Foolish_ ," she whispered, hard and fierce. "The most blind, idiotic, _stupidly_ courageous man, and all the more dangerous for it. You make life ... so very complicated, Ivan. And there are times I really wish I could hate you for it."

He breathed, a slow inhale, a long, ragged exhale. Feeling all those scars beneath his hands, the heat of newly torn flesh, hard muscles and soft curves, the marks and maps of age and pain and rich, bloody triumph across her skin. Feeling the bite of her nails across his own, across those three white scars on his chest that he had looked at for so many years and _loved_.

"... I wore them as proof of your love," he told her quietly. Rich and wry, and desperately earnest. "Presumptuous, I know. But you were the most deadly creature I had ever met, and I _knew_ what it meant when I woke." He shook his head, a twitch of his lips in the moonlight. "My life has been yours from that moment. There was never another, none who could kill me and save me in the same moment. You marked me for your own, Victoria, and I have never once regretted it."

" _God_ ," she rasped, hard and deadly alongside him, quivering faintly in his arms. He tried not to love the sensation too much. "Ivan. You stubborn, stupid, _romantic_ Russian. I should have killed you. I _knew_ I should have killed you."

He laughed, tugging her down beneath him, curling her under him into the shelter of his arms. She went, drifting downward in a slide of sheets, the pale, lean lines of her body slipping without hesitation into his embrace. She looked up at him, a bright, terrible angel, and he leaned down to press his lips to hers, to kiss her soft and sweet and black as blood in the moonlight.

"Yes," he agreed, smiling down at her. "You should have killed me then, my love. But you did not, and now we are here. Sharing a bed in this pleasant little cabin, with a great deal more autonomy than we once had, with the rest of our lives before us and a range of _very_ exciting people that we might choose to kill." He grinned, sly and vicious, in love with the hunger of her. "Come now. Don't you think that's worth a little complication in our lives?" 

She glared up at him, lean and pale and deadly beneath him, so brutal, so beautiful, the most perfect creature in the world. This woman who owned him, body and soul, and made his heart beat with joy for the thought of it. His bunny, his nemesis, his Victoria.

"... You're lucky I love you," she said at last, a low hum of violence and anticipation and possessive exasperation, and Ivan bared his teeth, a blind grin in the moonlit darkness, and curled her close against him.

"That," he concurred cheerfully, "I have never doubted."


End file.
